Nineteenth-Century Trade Card Collection (800)

In the late nineteenth century, merchants and manufacturers often produced colorfully illustrated cards to distribute as store advertisements. The trade cards, which normally measured approximately 3 x 4.5 inches, were often comic in nature and featured a wide variety of images. The merchant or manufacturer’s name and address was printed on either the front or reverse. Cards often also featured images of the product or service being advertised. Offered here is an enormous collection of such cards that are highly prized by collectors today both for their beauty and historic value. Of the approximate 800 cards in this collection, 300 are presented individually, housed in plastic four-pocket pages, while the others are all displayed mounted upon the pages of two period scrapbook albums, as intended. In the days before television, it was a very common and popular pastime for advertising trade cards to be saved in albums such as these, which were then often displayed in the living room for family and guests to enjoy. Virtually every type of popular product imaginable is represented in this collection, including milk, coffee, meats, lard, cologne, beer, various medicines, cough syrups, liver pills, cotton, jewelry, etc., and some cards are purely decorative, produced specifically for mounting in albums and have no identified sponsor. Additionally, one of the albums also contains approximately sixty period business/calling cards. Both scrapbook albums have been rebound. One of the albums has the original album cover affixed to the front of the modern cover. The other album has been beautifully leather-bound. With regard to the non-mounted trade cards, conditions range from Good to Excellent, averaging Vg-Ex. Nearly all of the 300 loose cards measure approximately 3 x 4.5 inches, with some slightly smaller. The albums feature a wider diversity of card sizes (ranging from approximately 2 x 3 inches to 8.5 x 12 inches) and include a few cards that have been trimmed. This is an extremely substantial original collection of these scarce Victorian-era cards, which represents such an outstanding value for collectors, and which would be difficult, and far more costly, to assemble one card at a time. From the Barry Halper Collection. Total: approximately 800 cards. Reserve $800. Estimate $1,500/$2,500.SOLD FOR $2,643.75

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